_All right. I lay frozen in my bedroom wishing the good little bitch would go away, and I DO NOT KNOW whether or not I heard what she was up to in the kitchenette. You're not helping, Judge. You're not helping me remember._ Eyes wide, she saw the dull wall had grown a little brighter with dawn, and wished that the man on the bench might appear as a genuine visual hallucination: it would be interesting. But he lived in the brain only; her outer eyes would not create him. _I did hear her knock on my bedroom door, call my name, say something else stupid, go away with a tap of little high heels. Get it, Judge? This is the Blank, this is the thing you're not helping me remember:_ _If I did hear her take that brandy bottle out, if I wasn't too hysterical to remember what was in it and why, then_-- (_Spot of soup on Cecil's coat sleeve. Old, half-sick, drinking too much, his wife dead long ago and nobody to look after him--when he's dead who'll even remember what he was, the courage and the kindness? Cesspool known as the world--people are already forgetting Darrow, aren't they? and every other who's tried to clean it out, dig channels to drain away the filth of human stupidity?_) _If I heard her and remembered what was in the bottle, then I murdered her. If I didn't, then as a potential but incompetent suicide I was merely maintaining a public nuisance. As a good man well known to you would say, it's that simple. But that is the Blank, Judge, and you're not helping me._ _I therefore address my closing remarks to other gentlemen of Winchester County, specifically District Attorney Lamson and his subordinate Talbot Jesus-wept Hunter. I wish to apologize to them for laughing, being convinced that the noise just heard in my apartment was laughter and not rats. I have no wish to laugh and hurt your feelings, but it IS funny. Honest, isn't it funny how the judge and jury inside me (with some inconsequential imaginary help from that rather nice joe Judge Mann) can make me squirm and whimper like a gut-shot rabbit, while YOU CAN'T?_ II Edith Nolan watched the cherries wobbling on Maud Welsh's hat as the woman perched in the witness chair, a sparrow ready for flight. T. J. Hunter purred and soothed. "Your occupation, Miss Welsh?" "Guess you could say housekeeper." The voice was dry, brittle as the woman's skin. Merciless morning light played on Maud's wrinkles; bad judgment had tricked her into using dabs of make-up.